


Care of Magical Creatures

by aeli_kindara



Series: Scaffolding 'Verse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 05:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13093029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Lily finds out about Remus, and everything else.





	Care of Magical Creatures

**Author's Note:**

> I'm putting this in my Scaffolding 'Verse because it shares continuity in my head, but it should stand alone just fine.

“James,” says Lily, staring at his chest, “James, are you going to tell me _what in the hell_ is going on?”

She’s staring at the big dark bruise there, the angry red lines scored by four massive claws, Moony’s doing. James panics — he should have _thought_ , should have healed himself, should have remembered this would be here for her to see, but he’s been riding the wild sleepless euphoric edge of the morning after the full moon and completely _forgot_ , and then Lily was there and kissing him and —

“Um,” James says, inventing wildly. “Er — Care of Magical Creatures?”

“James,” says Lily, and he loves that, loves how she always says his name, “you don’t _take_ Care of Magical Creatures.”

“Right,” says James. “Right — um — detention! With the, with the Care of Magical Creatures professor. You know. Forbidden Forest, manly feats, all in a day’s —” He falters.

Lily stares. At length, she says, “The Care of Magical Creatures professor. Whose name is?”

James’s throat goes dry.

“Professor Kettleburn,” Lily supplies after a moment. “James, do you think I can’t tell you’re feeding me a line of utter bullshit?”

James winces. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he is.

Lily is glaring, arms folded over her chest, looking impressively severe even though her shirt is unbuttoned and her hair in disarray. She taps one finger against her arm. “Tell me,” she commands. “Now.”

He stares at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I _can’t_ , Lil.”

“You can’t,” she repeats, in a voice like ice and steel.

“It’s — it’s not my secret to tell, all right?” he says desperately. “I _would_ , if it were. But — please, Lil, I really can’t. I’m fine, you know,” he starts to add, and then quails under the fury of her gaze.

“Sirius,” Lily hisses with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry — what?” James stares.

“ _Sirius,_ ” Lily repeats. “This is his fault, somehow, and I’ll — oh, Merlin’s balls!” She turns, abruptly, on her heel, and storms out, before a gaping James has time to collect his jaw from the floor, never mind muster some kind of answer.

\---

Sirius supports Remus on his way down the corridor.

Things have gotten better, he knows, since the three of them have learned how to join him. Remus no longer emerges from the night of the full moon a bloody, beaten mess — or at least, no more than they all do, after roughhousing through the Forbidden Forest all night. Sirius used to steal away in James’s invisibility cloak, stand vigil outside the Hospital Wing, waiting for Madam Pomfrey to appear with Remus limping beside her, sometimes leaning on her for support, sometimes unconscious on a stretcher. Back then, he would see the blood and think that was the worst of it. And, well, Remus assures them all that it _is_ much better now, that they’ve helped immeasurably, but…

It’s just, Sirius had never _seen_ the transformation before. Never watched his friend scream helplessly, crouched on the floor, as his bones popped and broke and reformed, muscles tearing, tendons and nerves stretching and snapping. He knows how hard Remus tries not to, how much he wants to hold it in, but he _can’t_ , and he screams and screams until Sirius wants to scream too. He doesn’t. It won’t help.

It’s quieter in the other direction, maybe because the wolf is tired but probably mostly because its mind doesn’t comprehend things like pain the same way, and by the time Remus is a boy again, pale and shivering and naked on the floor, he’s usually unconscious, or almost.

Sirius also knows, now, how bad it is, those days around the full moon. Even before, as the waxing moon pulls at Remus’s bones, but especially after — the exhaustion and the aching, as Remus slowly tries to put himself back together again.

Remus doesn’t _need_ Sirius’s support — strictly speaking. It’s a werewolf thing, he’s said, and Sirius has seen it’s true: if Remus _needs_ to, really _needs_ to, he could wake up from the full moon and run ten laps around the school. He could swim to the bottom of the lake and back and stop to wrestle the giant squid. He could pick Sirius up and carry him back to the castle — and he has, one time when they played too rough, and Sirius went back to being two-legged and discovered he couldn’t exactly walk. James and Peter had tried to help, but Remus had snarled at them, as if still half-wolf, and picked Sirius up and carried him, just like that.

Still, there are some mornings when Sirius slings Remus’s arm around his shoulders and Remus lets him, sags with grateful exhaustion against Sirius’s side, and Sirius understands that wolfish snarl, because he wouldn’t let _anyone_ else touch Remus, not when he’s like this, not when _Sirius_ is the one who can help.

“Here,” he murmurs into Remus’s hair, because Remus’s head has sagged forward, half-resting on his shoulder as he blearily watches his own feet. “Here, almost to the portrait, all right? Almost there.”

But as they round the corner, the portrait of the Fat Lady swings open from inside, and a vision of fury pelts out from within.

“ _You,_ ” says Lily.

She’s quite a sight. Her hair is a tangled halo around her head, and her shirt is only half done up, her fingers fumbling with the buttons even as she glares at Sirius. It’s obvious she’s just come from getting up to god-knows-what with James, and, _oh God,_ Moony hit Prongs full on the chest last night, must have left a nasty mark, and if James didn’t —

“I know this is your fault,” Lily is saying. “I know if — he won’t _tell me_ , and that means it must be _you_ , you’re the only one who makes him do anything so irrevocably stupid —”

At Sirius’s side, Remus is making a valiant effort to straighten, to stand under his own power, and Sirius has had about enough of this. “Evans,” he snaps, pulling Remus closer to him again, “ _Fuck off_.”

For a moment, she looks so taken aback that she can’t speak, so Sirius shoulders past her, pulling Remus with him. He stumbles a little but finds his feet, and then Sirius is helping him climb through the portrait hole. He lands on his knees on the common room floor, but Sirius is through after him, helping him up again. Only Remus breaks away, stumbles to an armchair and sinks into it, gripping the arms with white hands and staring at the floor as if he’s trying very hard not to vomit on it.

“What have you done to him?” demands Lily, who has followed them back inside, arms folded. “You’ve gotten Remus tied up in this too, whatever it is, and —”

Freed, for the moment, of more pressing obligations, Sirius feels fury lance through him. Before he can stop himself, his wand is out and he’s advancing on her. “Evans,” he says again, low and furious. “I thought I told you to fuck off. If you can’t figure that out on your own —”

“Sirius,” says Remus sharply behind him.

He should maybe be embarrassed by how quickly that can bring him up short, but he isn’t, because it’s — well, it’s Remus, and Sirius doesn’t care how stupid he looks when it comes to Remus. He lowers his wand and eases back, a fraction of a step.

Evans is breathing hard, her wand out now too, and she doesn’t look so much afraid as she does furious, which Sirius can’t help but, distantly, admire.

“Lily?”

James’s voice, from the stairwell. He hurtles around the corner, hands also on the buttons of his shirt, and stops dead at the scene before him: Lily and Sirius, wands out, glaring daggers at each other, and Remus, hands still clamped to his armchair, but pale face alert now, and set.

“I don’t know what he’s got you all mixed up in,” Lily bites out, still glaring at Sirius. “But I’m going to find out, so help me God, and if —”

“Lil,” says James tiredly. “Please, Lil, it’s really not Sirius’s fault. Please just drop it.”

“I will not drop it!” she snaps. “You disappear all night and come back looking like you’ve been attacked by wild animals, and when — James, you _know_ what’s going on out there, you know he’s been building an army of dark creatures, of — of giants, and werewolves, and you think I’m going to let you go out there and be an idiot and not —”

“Lily.” James again, but with some of that slow, sure confidence, the mark of the stag, that comes out more and more, these days, in the boy. “It’s not what you think. I’m asking you to drop it.”

There’s a moment of utter silence. Lily seems taken aback, for a moment, but not for long; she’s drawing breath for another tirade when Remus speaks, from behind them all, making them jump, his voice tinged with exhaustion but iron underneath, and sure.

“It’s all right, James,” he says.

They all turn to stare at him.

“Moony —” starts James, after an uncertain moment, then stops. Sirius’s tongue feels frozen to the roof of his mouth.

Remus has never told _anyone._ Not of his own free will.

“Lily,” says Remus, raising his face, his too-pale, too-thin face, “I’m sorry. It’s not Sirius’s fault, or James’s. It’s mine.”

Lily is staring, too. “What —” she starts, but Remus speaks over her.

“And,” he says, “and, you should know, I — she’s right about — about Voldemort. I was approached last summer. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I just…. They know. Somehow. And they’ve given me until graduation to decide, but when I say no, they’ll — it was implicit, really, that they’ll start telling people. So there’s not much point in hiding it, anymore.”

Sirius can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t move. Beside him, Lily’s mouth is working furiously, silently. “Last night,” she says at last. “Last night was the full moon. You’re a —”

“A werewolf,” says Remus calmly. “Yes.”

Lily is staring, again, and Sirius is shocked to realize that her eyes are brimming with tears. “How _long_?” she says.

“How long?” Remus repeats. “Twelve years, since I was bitten. Five, since James and Sirius and Peter figured it out. Two, since —” But he stops, abruptly, and Sirius realizes absurdly, furiously, that Moony is protecting _them._

“But if,” Lily says softly, incredulously, “but if Remus was a — was a _wolf_ last night, and you’re coming home with claw marks, then —”

“It’s not what you think,” James says, again. “He can’t hurt us, not more than you’ve already seen, anyway. He can’t _turn_ us.”

Lily is staring, horror-struck. “You’re mad,” she whispers. “I — you’re _mad_.”

“No,” says James steadily. “We’re Animagi.”

There’s a moment of pure silence. Then Lily starts laughing, high-pitched hysterical giggles without a hint of humor. “What,” she gasps. “What do you — you’re _seventeen,_ McGonagall said it took _years_ to learn, that’s really advanced magic, you expect me to —”

Suddenly, Sirius has heard enough. This girl, this impossible _girl_ who’s always warping their lives, and Remus is sitting there tired and alone and hurting, and he’s — he’s being threatened by the goddamn _Death Eaters_ and never bothered to mention it, and Sirius _doesn’t care_ about her stupid hangups and her anger and her long shiny hair, _doesn’t care_ if James loves her and he’s supposed to want James to be happy, doesn’t care about _anything_ else she has to say, because there’s Remus, and he needs him.

He turns away, and in an instant he’s a huge black dog, padding across the carpet. He stops at Remus’s chair, shoulders hard against his legs, then lays his massive head on his lap. Remus’s hands move automatically, burying themselves in his shaggy fur, rubbing soft circles behind his ears. _This_ , Sirius thinks, his mind a little slower, a little doggier, _this. It’s all right._ He anchors himself here, a wall between Remus and the world, a guard against shrill redheads with nothing better to do than throw fits and complain.

Lily is staring at him.

“You,” she says faintly. “You’re not joking.”

James shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “No,” he says.

Lily swallows. “And you can,” she says softly, speaking just to him now, and James bows his head and in an instant there’s a great stag in the common room, antlers shining in the torchlight.

Lily lets out a small gasp, then reaches out a hesitant hand, and the stag comes to her, lowering his head, nosing gently against her palm. Lily turns, eyes wondering, toward Sirius and Remus again.

“They did this for you,” she says softly, and Sirius feels Remus’s nod.

“When I transform,” he says quietly, still rubbing circles in Padfoot’s fur, “I want — the wolf wants — human prey. But I’m safe around animals.” He pauses. “Relatively safe. I’m sorry about James.”

The stag snorts, tossing his head a little, then butts his nose against Lily’s hand again. She gives a shaky little laugh that seems to surprise her.

“I don’t even,” she murmurs, running a hand along the grain of its fur, wondering. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“How do you think I felt?” Remus asks, wryly, and Lily laughs.

“I still have questions,” she adds at the end of it, with a warning look at the stag. But a moment later, she’s reaching for his antlers with tentative fingers. “Can I —?”

James lowers his head, and she runs light fingers over them, transfixed. Her mouth makes a silent little _o,_ and that’s about all Sirius can take, so he turns back to glare at them and snap, “Get a room, you two.”

Lily turns back to look at him coolly, for all the world as if boys changing into dogs and back again is old hat to her already. “You should talk,” she says, which is when it occurs to Sirius he’s still on all fours between Remus’s legs, chin resting on Remus’s thigh.

James is James again with a soft _pop,_ making Lily sway slightly at the disturbance. “Believe me,” he says, aggrieved, “it gets worse.”

Sirius scrambles to his feet, red-faced and wishing he wasn’t. He gives them both a comprehensive gesture and reaches to pull Remus to his feet.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “Bed. Almost there; I’ll carry you if I have to.”

Remus demurs in a mumble, and lets Sirius support him again toward the stairs. He can feel Lily’s eyes on them, but he steadfastly ignores the warmth shining out of them. He has one job, and all the rest is noise.

Upstairs, he strips off Remus’s shoes and socks, helps him fumble out of belt and pants and buttons and under the covers. It seems stupid to him, to get fully, immaculately dressed just to walk home from the Hospital Wing, but Remus will be Remus.

Sirius curls up beside him on the bed and gives his hand one hard squeeze before he transforms and turns to rest his head on Remus’s chest. Remus sighs and wraps an arm around Padfoot’s shaggy bulk, then strains forward to press a kiss to his head. Sirius gives him a Look — a Lie Down and Sleep, You Stupid Wolf Look — and Remus smiles faintly, and complies.

_Try cuddling up with a stag,_ Sirius thinks, with petty triumph. _All sharp hooves and knobbly knees. See how you like those bloody antlers then._

Remus makes a noise low in his chest — a comfortable rumble, a Same Goes For You, Padfoot You Wanker noise — and that’s fair. Sirius settles his chin decisively, whuffs out a doggy breath for Remus’s benefit, and closes his eyes.

Tomorrow, he’ll deal with the rest of it. Death Eaters and further questions and the Future and everything Sirius would rather just punch in the face and be done with. Tomorrow he’ll start the task of wrestling the world into a place both he and Remus can live. Tomorrow.

For now, he has his weight and his warmth and his love, and those are enough.


End file.
